Chupacabra Attacks in Chile

El Chupacabra has been crawling all over Chile in the last few months, raising many new questions about this mysterious creature, and resulting in astonishing claims about its origin.

 
It stands three to four feet tall, has a flexible row of spines down its back, eyes that glow red and long, sharp fangs... some even say it has wings. This is how eyewitnesses have described the strange, unworldly creature known as El Chupacabra - Spanish for "the goat sucker." The creature, as elusive as Bigfoot and as terrifying as a demon, earned its name from the way it kills its victims (mostly farm animals, including goats) - by sucking the life blood from them.
Chupacabra first made the headlines in 1995, when several attacks were reported in Puerto Rico. 

The small island still claims the most number of attacks to date, but slaughtered chickens, ducks, goats, cats, dogs and other small animals have been attributed to Chupacabra in Mexico, Central America, South America and even parts of the Southern United States.

During April, May and June of 2000, however, there were reports of a spate of attacks coming out of Chile. The mysterious deaths of farm animals followed the same pattern as those in Puerto Rico and other countries, and descriptions from eyewitnesses who claim to have actually seen the creature in Chile match the hideous features detailed in previous accounts.

The stories that came out of Chile - many reported in Chilean newspapers - had an incredible twist. A few of the dreaded creatures, they said, were actually caught and killed... and then their bodies were taken away by representatives of U.S. government agencies. That was the claim, anyway.

The Attack Begins

The recent attacks began in April, and newspapers carried stories of the mysterious deaths of close to 200 goats, sheep, chickens and rabbits in northern Chile. At first the deaths were blamed on packs of wild dogs, but one trademark feature of the killings turned the suspicion on the legendary Chupacabra. The respected Reuters news agency reported that some of the animal victims "had incisions in their throats and their blood had been sucked out." The report also said that "detectives swept the zone with night vision equipment and that blood-curdling sounds were heard in the dark, causing residents not to venture outside."

Victor Espinosa, an investigator for Chile's Ecology Department, was said to take hair samples and footprint castings for examination. "The paw prints do not match those of horses, cows, goats, pigs, felines or wild dogs," Espinosa said. And, according to Dr. Virgilia Sanches-Ocejo of the Miami UFO Center, Espinosa also said that evidence shows that the animal walks on two legs and only attacks hot-blooded animals and not snakes or lizards of the region.

http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa062600a.htm